HOUSES IN THE BOLIVIAN AMAZON:

The Use of Technology to Understand the Past

While people living today may never experience the past as it truly was, technology has taken modern man one step closer to understanding the past. Since humans began recording history, there have been drawings and art created, reflecting the environment in which people lived. Through this art, as well as archaeological remains and textual descriptions, we can piece together what the past may have looked and felt like to someone living in that time. Virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR, respectively) can give modern viewers a path into the past. Rather than imagining the past, we can now partially recreate it with the aid of computer technology. Experiencing the past through VR and AR allows modern humans to have a deeper understanding of and connection to the ancient people we all descended from.

In this project, I will create a model of a house from the Baures region of Bolivia in the 15th and 16th centuries, as described by Spanish colonials in the area. This model will be incorporated into a scene in Unreal, a game engine, to better create a scene to people. Houses are found around the world, starting around 8,500 years ago, and are found in close to every human culture. Modelling these houses is an important part of making a realistic scene to “people.” Peopling the past begins with the setting, and houses are an integral part of the environment where people live and exist. Houses serve as a material record of how people lived, including where they settled, with whom they lived, and how they organized their settlements. Each culture is reflected in its housing.

The Bolivian Amazon

The Baures region is a tropical swath of Northern Bolivia, in the Amazonian region. This area has been occupied for 3 millennia, and includes a wealth of archaeological and landscape remains. The Baure people of the region were a technologically complex people who shaped the landscape around them to fit their needs (Erickson). The Baure lived in large groups in moated villages, out from which spanned massive earthworks and canals. These canals were used for fishing, irrigation, and transport, giving the Baure access to the wealth of the Amazon (Erickson). The Baure farmed for their main sustenance, but also relied on fishing (Metraux 1948: 400). The canals were also used for transportation in large dugout canoes up to 10 m long made of hollowed out tree trunks or bark (Metraux 1948: 401). Many ethnographers have described the villages of the Amazonian region, usually focusing on the thatch roof houses and busy villagers (Steward 1963). The houses are made of natural local materials and contain up to 8 families, often sleeping in lofts or hammocks (Metraux 1948).

Amazonian Housing

Houses in the Bolivian Amazon today preserve traditions thousands of years old. Houses in the Bolivian Amazon are of interest because they have not changed substantially over the past 3 millennia (Nordenskiold 1924: 30). Some Bolivian Amazonian communities had upwards of 400 structures, including personal homes, community spaces, and kitchens (Devevan 1966: ----). There were various sizes of houses in the community, from small houses for the leader’s family to homes of up to 8 familes (Nordenskiold 1924: 32). The Baures region villages were constructed on earthwork mounds near the canals used for fishing and travel. Because waterways were so integral to the agriculture and travel of the region, building settlements far from water was untenable (Erickson).

The construction of the houses in the Baures region stays relatively constant across villages, as described by both modern ethnographers and colonial visitors. The houses were made from tree trunks with palm or reed thatching. The frame of the house was made of tree trunks trimmed down to the appropriate size for their place in the structure (Nordenskiold 1922: Figure on pg 3). The frame of the house, including support beams and struts, was made of between 8 and 15 trees, depending on the size of both the trees and the building (Nodenskiold 1922: Figure on pg 5). Typical round houses were “small, thatched beehive huts,” fully enclosed to protect against mosquitoes (Metraux 1948: 385). Rectangular houses and community buildings were made of two or three rows of wooden posts, covered in thatch made of reeds and dried palms (Metraux 1948: 400). The sides were open on the kitchens and buildings with fire pits, but the rest were often low enough to the ground that the entire space was enclosed by the thatch (Denevan 1966: ----) Depending on the tribe and settlement, the houses were either relatively permanent, with inseparable walls and roofs, or temporary, with more haphazard thatching and distinctions between the walls and roof (Nordenskiold 1924: 21). These buildings have saddle-roofs, meaning the thatching was laid over a center beam with supporting side beams, creating an open-bottomed triangle shape (Warrick: Figure 16). The thatch was made of reeds and/or dried palms, depending on the permanence of the structure. Temporary buildings often had palm frond thatching laid over the roof frame, creating a haphazard appearance that degraded quickly in any extreme weather (Hiraoko 1980; Warrick: Figure 14). More permanent structures had roofs of carefully organized reeds, laid out perpendicular to the roof frame, creating a mat onto which additional plant matter could be placed (Gragson 1995; Warrick: Figures 11-13). The layering of multiple materials helped to both insulate the house and create a layer that was easy to replace (the plant material) over a permanent and protected layer (the reeds) (Hiraoko 1980; Gragson 1995).

Goals, Process, and Data

My goal for the project was to create authentic and realistic looking houses of different sizes and builds to show the full range of houses made by native Bolivians in the Amazon as described by ethnographers, including Nordenskiold and Devevan. I focused on the ground plans in literature about the 15th and 16th century to create my houses. I used additional images of modern houses from the Baures region to create the most realistic structure I could, provided by Dr. Erickson.The house I chose to model is Figure 14 in my pictures document. I chose this house because it showed the interior structure and dimensions of the different upright support beams and horizontal struts well. I used figures 15 and 16 for further inspiration, using the side views to better imagine the thatch roof and depth of the house (Warrick: Figure 14-16).

My project process began with research into houses in the Baures region of the Bolivian Amazon. I used Autodesk Maya 2016, a computer modelling software, to create my house models. I began with modelling houses from a cube shape, with added textured planes to represent thatch. However, this method of modelling failed because the houses appeared too solid, and were difficult to realistically texture (Figures 6-10). I changed my tactic and used cylindrical components to build the timber interior framework of the house. The framework of the houses consists of a rectangular ground plan with upright supports at each corner and midway through the ground plan. The two middle uprights have a ridge pole on top. The corner supports connect to struts to support the thatch that is added on, which is laid from the top ridge pole down on the side struts (Warrick: Figures 4 and 5). I made long cylinders for the corner timber upright supports, adding dark wood texture to mimic the coloration I saw in my reference images.

The most difficult part of the process for me was the thatch for roofing. I used XGen hair modelling for some of the thatch. I created plane polygons in Maya and used them to cover the area between the ridge pole and the struts, then used XGen to add short hair texture. I chose to use the short hair texture and then lengthen it manually because XGen gives more editing choices with the short hair. I created planes covered in “hair” colored yellow-brown to match the images I found. However, thatch roofing was usually made of palm fronds and thicker plant materials, not thin strands of material, so the effect was incorrect for my model (Warrick: Figure 6). I decided to use the Paint Effects add-on for Maya. To accomplish this, I used the same planes as for the hair model, but painted on plant material instead of adding hair texture. Paint Effects allowed more control over the directionality and depth of the material, as well as providing a wide variety of plant textures, rather than one simple hair texture. I made an additional house and created reed thatching as well, to show the alternate ways of adding thatch to houses (Warrick: Figure 3). I created the reeds from thin, long cylinders laid perpendicularly across the roof support beams. I textured the reeds with a lighter texture than the wood, as that is what was represented in the images I used.

Results and Conclusions

The house model I created is shown in Figures 1-3. I chose this iteration of my model as the final because it best represented the picture off which I based the model (Warrick: Figure 14). At this point in the project, I have created a house with proportions and layout representative of a house in the Baures region, either today or 500 years ago. The house has reed thatching as the roof because it is “under construction,” so the viewer gets the full effect of the house structure and thatch. I feel that my house is an accurate depiction of a Bolivian Amazonian house, though it is imperfect. I hope to continue work on my model to make the reed thatching thinner, add a layer of palm thatching, and edit the length of the roof support beams. Additionally, my house model will be incorporated into a scene in Unreal that will be peopled with human models, giving my house context and meaning.

References Cited